Witness History

On 12 August 1990, the world's most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex was found in South Dakota.

Deena Newman speaks to Peter Larson whose team made the landmark discovery.

This programme was first broadcast in 2015.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were t...

In May 1942, a team of Norwegian resistance fighters in occupied Norway were getting ready to blow up a railway carrying materials crucial to the German war machine.

Led by Lieutenant Peter Deinboll, a local from the area, they set out to execute what the Allied forces saw as the top priority sabotage operation in Norway at that stage in the war. Should they fail, allied planes would carpet bomb the village, including Deinboll’s ho...

In the early 1990s, Algeria was engulfed by a brutal civil conflict, as armed Islamist groups fought the state and civilians lived in fear. Foreigners were urged to leave, and many did. But Sister Lourdes Migueles, a Spanish Augustinian nun who had already spent decades serving in Algeria, chose to stay.

As the violence worsened, religious figures also became targets. In October 1994, two of Sister Lourdes’s fellow nuns, Caridad Alv...

In April 1991, journalists from 38 African countries came together in Namibia for a week-long seminar to discuss the need for a free, independent and pluralistic press on the continent.

When discussions ended after five days on 3 May, they had created the Windhoek declaration - a declaration of free press principles.

Later that year, Unesco’s general conference endorsed the declaration.

In 1993, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 3 Ma...

On 17 December 2014, United States president Barack Obama and the leader of Cuba, Raúl Castro, announced the normalisation of their countries' relations, ending 54 years of hostility.

The announcement was a shock to most except a few trusted aides who had worked for 18 months to make it happen.

Alejandro Castro, Raúl Castro's son, represented the Cuban side, while Ben Rhodes, Obama’s speech writer, was sent by the US.

Speaking to Anou...

In 1971, the region that is now Bangladesh fought for independence from Pakistan. At the time, Peter Singer was a philosophy lecturer at the University of Oxford.

Horrified by the suffering in Bangladesh, Singer wrote an essay in which he put forward his Drowning Child thought experiment, one of the most influential ideas in modern philosophy.

The thought experiment, published in 1972, inspired the Effective Altruism movement, whic...

In October 1973, the Netherlands was the only western European country to face a full oil embargo from the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, OAPEC.

During the global oil crisis, they became the first country in Europe to introduce car-free Sundays with most private cars banned from public roads on Sundays.

Wim Meijer was the State Secretary for Culture, Recreation and Social Work in the Den Uyl Labour Government.

H...

On 26 April 1990, the world's first perfume archive opened in Versailles, France.

The idea behind L'Osmothèque was to create a collection of scents and preserve their memory.

Perfumer Jean Claude Ellena was one of the team who created it.

He speaks to Jen Dale about how L'Osmothèque was founded and how perfumes from previous centuries, that no longer existed, were re-created.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness His...

In 2007, the Mexican state of Tabasco experienced its worst flooding in 50 years, with more than a million people affected.

Eighty per cent of the region was under water, with people having to be rescued from the roofs of their homes by boat.

The flooding occurred after heavy rain caused rivers in the state to break their banks.

Marco Franco worked as an emergency coordinator for the Red Cross during the floods. He speaks to Tim O...

The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in Ukraine, on 26 April 1986, was the world’s worst nuclear accident.

The explosion in reactor four caused radioactive parts to be spread over the nearby area.

Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the decontamination efforts, including soldiers and workers at the power station. They were known as the liquidators.

Some even had to run out onto the roof of the reactors t...

In 1993, plans to log one of Canada’s ancient rainforests sparked the country’s largest act of civil disobedience.

It was known as the war in the woods. For months, protesters blocked a remote logging road on Vancouver Island, leading to more than a thousand arrests.

Megan Lawton speaks to protest organiser Tzeporah Berman who, aged 23, was arrested and charged with 857 criminal counts.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archi...

In 2011, after months of little or no rain in central and eastern Europe, water levels on some parts of the Danube River fell to their lowest level in 70 years.

It’s one of Europe’s busiest shipping routes, but in November of that year, traffic ground to a halt on major sections of the Danube, and, on the Serbia-Hungary border, dozen of cargo ships were stranded.

In Romania, one of the country’s nuclear power stations was at risk of...

In October 1982, Paraguay and Brazil closed the gates of the Itaipu River, beginning to fill the reservoir of what would soon be the world's largest dam. Located in a rainforest on the border between the two countries, the Itaipu dam would go on to supply vast amounts of energy for decades. But the rising waters also put thousands of animals at risk, as their habitat was flooded.

To mitigate this, the company launched one of the l...

In October 2012, a local historian stumbled upon a misplaced pamphlet in the Danish Archives.

It was a story called the Tallow Candle and is believed to be Hans Christian Andersen’s first fairytale.

Ejnar Askgaard, Curator and Senior Researcher at Museum Odense, verified the document.

He speaks to Surya Elango.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We...

Aceh in Sumatra is the only Indonesian province where Sharia Law, Islamic religious law, is in force. It followed years of conflict between Aceh and the central government.

In Arabic, Sharia means "the clear, well-trodden path to water". It is derived from the Quran, Islam's holy book and from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Interpretation of Islamic law is nuanced according to local culture and customs, which means the applic...

In October 1987, one of Africa's most radical leaders, Captain Thomas Sankara, was gunned down in a coup in Burkina Faso.

His overthrow was orchestrated by his old friend, Blaise Compaore.

Thomas Sankara's brother, Paul, spoke to Alex Last in 2013.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eye...

In 1993, the Irish writer Roddy Doyle won the prestigious Booker Prize for Fiction. His novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, was remarkable for the way it conveyed gritty drama through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy.

Roddy tells Ben Henderson about his inspiration for Paddy Clarke, how he balanced writing with becoming a father and teaching, and the emotions of the night he won the award.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Wit...

My Little Pony first appeared in shops in the United States in 1983 and in that decade alone more than 100 million would be sold.

But American toymaker Bonnie Zacharle tells Josephine McDermott how her idea to make a pony you could play with like a doll was turned down several times. She reveals the toys she liked to play with as a child living in Japan, how she updated Mr Potato Head and how her pony design first hit the market as...

In 1984, loggerhead sea turtle Jorge became trapped in fishing nets and was moved to an aquarium in Mendoza.

He was kept in captivity for more than 40 years until legal action and a campaign led to the closure of the aquarium and his release in 2025.

But, where is he now?

Megan Jones asks marine biologist Alejandro Saubidet, who was in charge of his rehabilitation.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is f...